Shamima Begum is 'a risk', daughter of ISIS victim tells LBC after jihadi bride's failed citizenship appeal
26 February 2023, 15:37 | Updated: 26 February 2023, 18:46
David Haines daugher talks to Sangita Myska (part 1)
Bethany Haines, whose father was beheaded by ISIS in 2014, says she has met ISIS brides like Shamima Begum and her UK citizenship appeal was rightly rejected because she is a "risk" to anyone around her.
Scottish aid worker David Haines was held hostage and beheaded by ISIS in 2014. The terrorist organisation filmed his murder and used it as 'propaganda'.
The victim's daughter, Bethany Haines spoke to LBC to discuss her thoughts on, former ISIS bride, Shamima Begum being denied her British citizenship by the Home Office.
Bethany Haines told Sangita Myska she felt the "right decision" had been made, as she said Ms Begum "poses a direct risk to all who are around her".
Read more: British state more guilty than Shamima Begum, says David Davis MP
Ms Haines explained she did feel the UK had a "responsibility" to take ownership of Shamima Begum, however, she said the UK justice system currently doesn't have the capacity to deal with her.
"Britain should deal with her but as it stands we don't have the proper laws or punishments in place that would support that," she expressed.
Sangita asked Ms Haines how she felt towards the so-called ISIS brides who chose to marry into the terrorist organisation: "What is your feeling about Begum and the women who did that?"
"In 2019 I went to Syria and did go to one of the camps that were holding some of the ISIS brides because I had so many questions to put to them," the victim's daughter started, "some of them that I met I could sort of understand their situation, I could empathise a lot with them".
Bethany Haines reacts to Shamima Begum ruling (Part 2)
"Others - who were more like Begum - they were very radicalised and brainwashed in their beliefs and there was kind of no getting through to them or talking to them like an actual person."
Bethany Haines said she met one British lady in Syria whose children's lives were threatened if she tried to leave, which she said "as a mother" forced her to feel empathy for the woman.
However, she said other ISIS brides behaved in a way that wasn't even human, describing them as "robots" who were "just spouting propaganda to every question you them".
Shamima Begum was fifteen when she left the UK to join ISIS - the same age as Ms Haines when her father was abducted. Bethany Haines told Sangita Myska she was "forced to grow up really fast" because of what happened.
Ms Haines told Sangita: "On my sixteenth birthday is when I found out and [I was] seventeen when he was killed."
Sangita asked if she ever thinks "well so was I" when people argue that Shamima Begum was only a child.
"Yes," she admitted, "and I also think at fifteen, yes you are still a child, yes you don't know a lot about the world but you know what's right and wrong.
"And joining an international terrorist organisation is the wrong thing to do."
Ms Haines said she doesn't think that Shamima Begum will "give up", believing that Begum will eventually be allowed back to the UK.
In relation to the trauma of her Dad's murder, she said Begum's case is "dragging things on".
"You get to one point in your life and think 'oh at least this part is over,' but it's always dragged on, [I'm] looking forward to the conclusion of it," she admitted.
This caller shares frustration at the Shamima Begum case
